Luscombe Street - Week 5 Update

The first Sunday of every month is Working Bee day at Luscombe Street, so there was a lot happening in and around the plot this weekend.  We're installing a second water tank down near the front of the block which will make watering the apple crates a lot easier!  Not that we have needed to the past five weeks - it has been raining an awful lot.  It makes life much easier only having to head out to the plot once a week to check up on things!

Very exciting news - the broad bean seeds have germinated!  In fact all of them have germinated so there may be a glut of broadbeans over the next couple of months!  Doesn't worry me - you can easily freeze or dry excess beans for use later on in the year.  The other plant that is going really well is the rhubarb.  It was only when I had returned home and took a look at the photos that I realised how green and healthy the plant is.  If you compare it with the photos, even from just last week, the plant has just grown from strength to strength.

There are little sprouts making their way up across the plot, having spread the heap of lettuce, rocket and herb seeds last week.  It will be great so see such a variety of foliage over the next couple of months taking over the plot.

Root / Fruit Bed

I thinned out the radish seeds a little this week, just relocated the sprouts to other parts of the bed.  The carrots continue to sprout and the nasturtium plant is growing well.

Legume Bed

 The broad beans have sprouted!  You might be able to see them surrounding the bottom edge of the photo, and also towards the centre.  There's probably 10 or so that have sprouted.

Brassica Bed

 The rhubarb plant is going really well, and the bok choy continues to sprout.  The purple sprouting broccoli is changing colour and looking really beautiful.

Allium Bed

I planted out some of the spring onions this weekend so this bed will be chock full of onions come spring.

I stocked up on bulk Seaweed Solution at CERES on the weekend and noticed that they also stock a product called Fish Emulsion, which I had heard of, but knew nothing about.  It is a great liquid fertiliser for the garden, particularly for fruiting and leafy vegetables.  It contains all essential nutrients your plants need to thrive.  The helpful person at CERES said to think about Seaweed Solution as more of a tonic for your plants, where Fish Emulsion provides a balanced and comprehensive fertiliser for your plants.

So all of the plants received a generous dousing of both Fish Emulsion and the Seaweed Solution this weekend.

Luscombe Street Update - Week 3

After a morning spent at CERES shopping for our fruit and veg, and helping a lovely friend of mine plant out her own little potted garden for her balcony, we headed up to the plot to have a look at how things were going and plant some seeds!

Everything is doing great.  The lettuce is going well in the Legume bed - the broadbeans haven't come up yet but I'm sure they will do in the next couple of weeks.  Radishes are sprouting in the Root / Fruit bed, and the bok choy seeds are also beginning to sprout in the Brassica bed.  We spread some parsley seeds across the plot along with coriander seeds in a few of the beds.  Apparently they are a great companion plant for peas and beans so I made sure we put plenty into that bed!

Our neighbour Jill kindly gave us some horse manure that she had picked up from a farm closeby so I spread a fair amount of that around the beds as well.  I'm sure the plants will appreciate that!  The spring onions are still to be planted but that will be a job for next week :)  Everything got a good water with Seasol as well.

The other cute thing that I put up were my homemade mobiles that made use of the offcuts from the plastic cup coloshes on the plants - you can see them dangling in the photos below.  Hopefully they will keep the birds and things away!

 Lettuce doing well in the Legume bed

 Radish seeds sprouting in the Root / Fruit bed

Planting some Coriander seeds in the Legume bed

 Bok Choy sprouts in the Brassica bed

The Plot - Looking North East

The Worm Cafe

I had a very busy weekend this weekend - I'm still trying to recover from it!  An early night tonight for me I think :)

I spent an exciting day all day Saturday at CERES undertaking the second part of the Permaculture workshop.  Having set up the Luscombe Street plot last weekend, I had spent some time during the week thinking about crop rotation and what I was going to plant in the garden for the late Autumn / Winter crop.  I had a few sketches to show Digga (our workshop guru) and we had a really great chat about how I can incorporate permaculture principles into the garden.  Its amazing how transferrable some of the concepts are from large scale properties down to a small one square metre plot.  I really encourage people to have a read up about permaculture as before this course I really had no idea what it was all about.  A lot of the principles are so common sense but are things that we would normally overlook!  I'm going to try and incorporate as much as I can, and will hopefully share with you a bit as I go :)

After the workshop I headed up to the CERES nursery to buy some seeds and seedlings for the plot, along with a ready made worm farm for home!  I was very excited about this because we are currently throwing away so much green waste from the kitchen that could be used as compost or fed to worms to produce wonderful worm tea or worm castings for both the garden at home and the Luscombe Street plot.

I bought a ready made kit, known as the 'Worm Cafe' made by Tumbleweed that comes with its own stand, bedding material, additional trays and a tap on the side to collect your worm juice.  Its quite an expensive option - you can build your own with polystyrene boxes as well - but with the concern of smelliness and rodents potentially getting in I thought it best to have a well constructed container for our wormies!  There's a great review with a video here.  For those of you who watch Gardening Australia, Costa met a worm expert in Sydney last week on the program (12 May 2012) who explained the process of setting up a worm farm really well!  Check it out here.

The process began with the reconstitution of the dried bedding material.  This meant submerging the 'brick' into a container of water for about 15 to 20 minutes prior to transferring into the first tray of the worm farm.  The bottom tray, connected to the tap, should be left empty for any juice to flow through down to the tap on the bottom.  Then it was time to add the worms!  I purchased a starter pack from CERES containing 1000-1200 worms.  These worms are wonderful feeders (they apparently eat up to twice their body weight each day!) and multiply very readily!  It will be interesting to see how they go!  

Week 4 Veggie Garden Update

So whilst all of the other exciting things have been happening, the garden at home has been going well!  The snow peas are steadily growing along with the lettuce and the spinach and spring onion seedlings have been taken out of the hot house to harden off prior to planting out in the new patch!  The broccoli plants are going well too, but have suffered a bit of an attack from what I think are moths.  The oats have now started breaking down so the culprit may be snails I'm not sure.  I'm thinking about whether or not I should plant the broccoli in the new patch or whether they should be kept in the pots at home.  I guess it will depend on what else I decide to grow out in the patch over the next week!  You will notice that the spinach seedlings have been thinned out and a few moved into separate pots.  I'm not exactly sure how thicky baby spinach can be planted so thought I would give both a densely planted and sparsely planted pots a go this season.  Lets see how it goes!

I bought a range of seeds from CERES on the weekend and have planted a few out and put them in the hot house ready for germination.  For the kitties in the neighbourhood I have planted some Catnip seeds (shown in the egg carton on the top), some parsley for the plot (small black containers), Kale seeds in the toilet rolls (a great propogating tool - no need to disturb roots when planting out! Just plant straight in the soil...) and some radish, Warrigal Greens and Nasturtium plants in the middle egg carton for planting at Luscombe Street.

A very exciting weekend...

So many exciting things happened this weekend that it is hard to know where to start!  Early Saturday morning I made my way down to CERES to do the weekly vegetable shop prior to heading down for the first session of the Introduction to Permaculture course with Justin Caverley.  What an amazing day.  We were introduced to the basic principals of permaculture, and provided with a huge amount of practical information on gardening and sustainable living in general.  What I have found most interesting so far is the overarching, completely inclusive nature of permaculture principals, focussing on cyclical and efficient behaviour that just makes so much sense.  I also love the fact that a lot of the work that needs to be undertaken in gardening is purely observational, that we need to slow down and actually observe the activity that is happening in the garden.  We spent most of the afternoon wandering around CERES looking at the gardening systems in place there that work so well, and tasting a plethora of bush foods that grow onsite.  I'm really looking forward to undertaking an assessment of our backyard as a permaculture design exercise and exploring it further at next week's class.  I met a great group of like minded people that also took part in the session, one new friend who introduced me to a great new community garden that is being set up in East Brunswick...

Fast forward a day and I am now the proud owner of a community plot at the Luscombe Street Community Garden in Brunswick!  I had prepared myself for a twelve month plus wait for a plot down the road from home in Hawthorn and now, very excitingly, have my own little space in Brunswick.  It will work really well as I enjoy heading to CERES on a Saturday morning to gather our fruit and veg for the week and will pop past to tend to the garden on the way home!

The new garden is located on a vacant block on Luscombe Street and is run by two Brunswick residents that live next door to the block.  They are renting the property and have gained permission from the landlord (who also owns the block next door) to utilise the vacant land for a community garden until they obtain planning approval to develop the site.  So it may be that we will only be able to stay onsite for a limited time but the owner has said that he will give us fair notice when he decides to develop the site, and is really supportive of the community garden onsite.

After raising money earlier in the year to purchase apple crates and nine cubic metres of soil to fill the garden beds, the crates were delivered last Thursday ready for setup this weekend.  Today was spent moving the crates and filling them with soil ready to plant out.  It was hard work but well worthwhile as we all have ready made tall beds that we can grow our own vegetables in!  Hot diggity!

My plot is located right in the centre of nine planters so will hopefully receive an even amount of sunlight which is great.  It will mean that a lot of the plants that I propagate at home I can bring out to the garden and grow.  I will still be growing a few varieties at home but will try to maintain a larger crop in Brunswick to feed us through the seasons.  Very exciting!

Week 2-3 Veggie Garden Update

I spent a great day in the garden today, preparing our backyard for bulbs that I bought during the week along with general work in the veggie garden.  All of the plants are doing well, with the exception of a couple of broccoli plants that have been nibbled by what appears to be nocturnal snails!  The snow peas are doing incredibly well and I have already begun harvesting lettuce leaves for my weekday lunches.  The baby spinach and shallots are also doing well - I spent a bit of time today thinning the spinach seedlings out.  They are now spread across four pots so it will be interesting to see how they go.  I wasn't sure whether moving them at only two weeks of age would be ok so I have left a heap in the initial pot just in case.  I have also taken the top off the makeshift greenhouse now that the seeds have sprouted and covered them with cheesecloth to deter any birds or possums that might want to have a nibble.  It was nice to have Arrow and her friend from next door, Mirin, helping out today!  Mirin was keen to check out the rolled oats I had put around the broccoli to deter the snails!

So I also planted the first of our bulbs into the garden today, the Dutch Irises, that don't require any chilling prior to planting.  I have planted in four sections of the garden, three bulbs per area so it will be interesting to see how they go.  We have put a packet of tulips in the crisper in the fridge to chill for at least 4 weeks prior to planting out the front of the house.

It's so nice to be able to get out into the garden, particular on days like we had today.  I'm about half way through a great book at the moment in preparation for a course I will be starting next week at CERES - I'm very excited!  I'll be doing an Introduction to Permaculture course over two weekends which will be lots of fun.  I highly recommend, if you are interested in the topic, reading 'The Basics of Permaculture' by Ross Mars.  A very easy but interesting read!

PS Thanks to my boyfriend Dan for taking the photos today!

Week 1 Veggie Garden

So we start in early April, Autumn in Melbourne.  Melbourne's climate is quite well suited to Autumn planting - quite different to Canberra where frosts are frequent meaning that many vegetables cannot be grown during this time.  Well, they probably could be grown but would need a lot of care to ensure they weren't frost bitten and received enough sunlight throughout the day.

I went down to CERES over the weekend for the first time - I'm not sure how many of you might have heard about this wonderful place before?  It's such an inspiring place and I urge you all to head down there if you live in Melbourne.

http://www.ceres.org.au/

They have a wonderful food market on Saturdays selling organic vegetables that they have grown onsite along with vegetables grown by other local organic gardeners.  They also have an organic food shop, supplying a variety of grains, eggs, and other organic store cupboard items.  What interested me the most this weekend was their nursery - my mission was to buy a selection of seedlings to plant to get my autumn gardening up and going.  They sell not only organic seedling produced onsite, but other seedlings for a vast array of vegetables and flowers.

I love snow peas, and was determined to give them a go in the garden.  I have had success with them before in Canberra, but haven't grown them in pots before.  As long as they have a trellace to grow on apparently they are very easy to grow in pots and only require a weekly feeding of seaweed solution to grow happily and healthily.

We had a spare polystyrene box that was perfect to slide the pots in and to hold a sheet of metal mesh to act as a trellace for the vines.  I hear that it isn't wise to grow plants directly in polystyrene boxes as nasy chemicals leech out into the soil - not sure about this as many people do grow in them?  I had picked up a few free pots from CERES anyway so thought it best to just grow in them instead.  Another tip that I thought was great was to plant a quick growing veggie alongside your peas, like lettuce, that will provide whilst the peas are growing (I planted some butter lettuce!).

The other vegetable that I love and thought would be worth trying in Autumn is broccoli!  CERES have grown their own broccoli and snow pea seedlings so I thought it would be great to get a head start and plant these straight in the ground.  Two to a pot - it will be interesting to see whether they are overcrowded in the pots?  Time will tell!  We're really lucky to have a north facing courtyard, so I have tried my best to position the pots in spots that receive the most amount of light during the day.  With a two storey townhouse nextdoor to us it can be tricky to find areas that aren't in shade for the majority of the day.  The peas are in prime position, with the broccoli positioned to the west receiving most of the morning sun up until about 12-1pm in the afternoon.

The following weekend I went down to Bunnings and bought a couple of packets of seeds and have had them germinating in a make-shift hot house made from a clear storage container with holes drilled in the top and bottom for drainage and ventilation.  It has worked a treat and as you can see the seeds have already sprouted!  I have planted spring onions and baby spinach, both of which we eat a lot of which is great.  I think its really important to have a steady supply of the vegetables you know you already eat, along with a few different vegetables that you would like to try.  My aim is to grow most of the vegetables we eat all the time, and dapple with a few different varieties here and there.

You can see the large sprouts are the baby spinach that sprouted in less than 5 days (the packet said they would in 10-14 days!).  I think the hot house is definitely doing its job!  The spring onions have only just started peeping their heads up a week after sowing.  The pictures below are of the broccoli, snow peas and lettuce a week after planting - they're doing well.  No sign of pests yet (only a few nibbles here and there).  I have tried to water all of the seedlings everyday and provided them with a seasol feed once a week as well.